First, welcome to the new VCAF website! I hope it is useful and informative.
Second, why a blog? I think it would be a useful way for me to communicate what I am focused on to a broader audience than I can normally reach in a more informal way. It may not work, but seems worth a try.
Third, why this website? Shortly after I arrived on campus, I asked my staff to update our website and make some minor architectural changes to it. I soon found out that this was easier said than done because of the outdated static platform it was built on. Apparently, most of our campus websites have this problem. So, instead of hiring a firm to build a new website, I was persuaded by the VCAF Communications Group that we should build an easy-to-deploy content management system (CMS) for our organization. This would not only solve my problem, it would allow me to bring all of VCAF under one web system, and provide a solution for anyone on campus who needed to rebuild their sites.
This decision meant that I had to be patient (believe me, not easy!) and wait a little longer to get what I wanted. But here we are! I am very pleased with the results and most of all with the fact that units on campus will no longer have to build their own systems from scratch because now the campus has something great to offer them. In the coming months, the team will be sprucing up the site, adding functionality to the CMS, and piloting with other VCAF units.
Take a look and let us know what you think.
More info on the project can be found on our Open Berkeley project page.